Education experts raise concern over doctoral training project

Several Vietnamese education experts have expressed concern over the Ministry of Education and Training’s VND12 trillion (USD545.4 million) project to train around 9,000 PhDs by 2025.

Vietnamese education experts have expressed concern over the project to train around 9,000 PhDs by 2025

Dr. Le Viet Khuyen, former deputy head of Tertiary Education Department under the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), said that it was totally understandable for the public to express doubts about the project following stories about Vietnam’s massive but ineffective doctoral training programmes.

Earlier projects carried out by MoET such as the national foreign language project and Vietnam Escuela Nueva project all proved costly but turned out to be failures.

Sharing Khuyen’s opinion, Prof. Dang Quoc Bao, former headmaster of the National Academy for Educational Management, said that the project has a good intention, but it was important how to implement it effectively. It would be a worrisome matter if the country had an additional 9,000 unqualified PhDs.

The MoET needs to have careful measures to avoid the failures of previous training programmes, Bao warned.

Associate Prof. Dr. Tran Xuan Nhi, former Deputy Minister of Education and Training, said that it is infeasible to train up to 9,000 PhDs between 2018 and 2025. The doctoral training programmes should be carefully considered, not hurried.

Regarding the project’s aim to raise the capacity of education and training managers, Nhi said that, it is an old way of thinking to require managers to have doctoral degrees, emphasising that degrees were not the most important issue, capability and vision were more vital.

Nhi suggested that people who are selected for doctoral training programmes needed to be carefully selected. They must be qualified and devoted to their work.

“We should spend VND12 trillion on improving teacher salaries so that their living condition can become better, instead of the project for the 2018-2025 period,” Nhi highlighted.